Today, a New York Times/Siena poll finds that Donald Trump dominates the other GOP presidential candidates by a huge margin. I explain how Donald Trump still manages to control the Republican Party through a small percentage of primary voters. I break down how Trump's views are not reflective of a majority of Americans, and how Americans cannot let their apathy result in Trump winning in 2024.
What is new about Donald Trump in the polls? Nothing has changed. for months but we are still hearing the same thing over and over again.
My response: So?
So the MAGA wing of the Republican party still supports Trump. That is not news yet it repeated over and over and the danger is that the it morphs into the county still supporting Trump which I do not believe is the case.
Christie makes an argument that should speak to the general electorate: Why does the Republican party want a nominee for President who has multiple federal indictments, massive legal problems (whether or not one believes they are legitimate they exist), and can't even find enough lawyers to represent him.
How much beyond $40 million are MAGA folks willing to fork out for the legal bills of a billionaire whose emotional and mental problems have put him in a hole he dug himself.
Is there not a case to be made that a 79-year old guy with 4 or 5 indictments has so many of his own problems he could not even begin to consider addressing those of the country?
Would anyone with a business hire a CEO who has 4 federal indictments to run their company?
The answer to these questions are DUHHHHH. And these should be the talking points -- not the high poll numbers and crazy responses.
Once again, the messaging is not on target. Let's get this straight and repeat it endlessly so that people know that Trump just has too many problems. Or as my Grandmother used to say about prospective husbands: "Everyone has baggage but nobody needs a steamer trunk."
You nailed it, Steve. If this country is important to me, to you, to all of us, we MUST vote! Loud and clear! A traitor like trump, which I believe he is, must NEVER WIELD POWER AGAIN!
Steve, another excellent, insightful presentation, as usual.
How is it, you ask, that DJ Trump still commands such a hold over his followers? I've spoken before on these threads about the phenomena of cognitive dissonance and Freudian defense mechanisms on the part of his followers. Let's look more at Trump himself....
We could analyze how he has been "riveting" and hypnotizing multitudes of passive viewers since his TV days on The Apprentice as an alpha male "top dog" boss-figure. (It's well known to hypnotherapists and psychotherapists that TV and movies induce a very suggestible hypnotic state in viewers. E.g., read the many papers archived at the APA over the decades on how cartoon violence affects children, etc.)
Trump did not earn that "leadership" position. It was all an artificial set-up created by the producers of the series and his own pretensions at "greatness" and "success." All of that has been de-constructed by investigative journalists starting with Tim O'Brien. But Trump exploited that artificial position to maximum advantage, and multitudes fell for it-- thinking him to be a "great business leader" and "financial mega-success." With his derisively-delivered line "YOU'RE FIRED!"-- he aggrandized himself into a dominance position with tremendous social power over other human beings' career success or failure.
In other words, that TV series allowed him to appear to the masses as a kind of influential demi-god. It was easy for him to parlay that into being a right-wing "populist" demagogue.
For his 2015-16 campaign and at all his rallies since then, Trump utilizes a few basic hypnotic techniques, most prominently these three:
1) Confusion-- he disorients less intelligent people's minds with his lengthy b.s. stories, whopping lies that paralyze logical analysis, ridiculous rhetorical questions, absurdist segues and run-on sentences, and so forth.
2) Very aggressive mouth behavior-- the frequent baring of teeth and severe pursing-curling of his lips-- which subliminally communicates dominance, as when two dogs first meet each other in a park or on the beach they quickly establish who is dominant by teeth-baring and growling.
3) Those weird hand gestures and arm movements, such as what has been described as "playing the accordion" routine, which subtly distract the attention so that he can pour into people's heads all his endless b.s..
And of course, as is well known, Trump has gained a massive following of "deplorables" (as Hillary Clinton termed them) by role-modeling and giving explicit verbal permission to be lying, cheating, nasty, intimidating, violent A**HOLES-- happy to break the law and violate common decency whenever it suits him/them.
And, lastly, so much of the content of his verbiage is the politics of resentment, rage, revenge, and scape-goating / demonizing "enemies," which stimulates in his followers the widespread "drug-fix" of being hopped up on adrenaline. They literally are “getting high on hatred.” And "high" on the hubris of feeling superior to their Democrat "enemies."
My understanding is that cult members will hold on like a pit bull! Hope they soon discover how he’s spending their contributions to cover his legal fees! He’s a criminal and more dangerous than Al Capone!
This Trump thing: it is a disease for which there is no vaccine to eradicate it. I have good friends who support Trump, people I believe to be good rational citizens, except for this disease they have that compels them to support a purposeless candidate for president of the United States. A candidate who fantasizes himself a living martyr...a martyr who is unwilling to die for anything, even himself. Is this a hero, a martyr? Trump is sick and he spreads his disease to the vulnerable, no matter what position they assume on life’s ladder. Rich, poor, white collar, blue collar, this disease doesn’t differentiate...it attacks the soul...it turns the sober to nonsensical, the good to bad, and the bad to flat fkn ugly.
Remember the look on Mitch McConnell’s face when the bottom dropped out of his brain and he was making everyone who witnessed this moment want to puke? His is the face of this sickness--and who’s hero is he now, as they cart him off on a stretcher?
I’ve been praying a lot, praying to any and all good gods and spirits who will listen....for the good of the people, for the good of the country, and for all the sacrifices that have been made in her defense---deliver us from this bullshit.
A frighteningly vast number of American people are willing to suffer (in both senses of the word) the selfish pathology of a Trump, who is mentally and emotionally unstable. Why? For one thing, we stopped teaching history and civics to elementary school students about fifty years ago, so those adults are now unable to see how their freedoms are being pulled out from under them. They’re also so damned busy trying to keep a roof over their family’s heads that they struggle to keep up even their personal relationships. No excuses, just an observation. Oh well, it was good while it lasted. Maybe we have to lose everything before we appreciate what we had. Okay, like most of us I am personally optimistic for some reason. We need to revive common sense and take back our helm. We’re allowing ourselves to be controlled.
Thank you for including a transcript. Much easier to read and refer back
You mentioned the 10% making primary decisions (30m vs 330m population). I’m trying to think if there is a better option for how to select candidates. The 19thC smoke/filled room is out, and not sure if the regional process might resolve the small % turnout challenge.
Unless there is a Deus ex Machina event between now and Nov 2024, the R candidate will be DJT. No matter how horrible he is, there small % who will support him will push him onto the ballot.
Interesting in todays stats was the 25% of R not supporting DJT. While it will not impact the primaries, it can help sway the General Election.
I encourage everyone to be active as we go into primary season and into the General Election. Many states are “purging “ voter rolls. Please make sure your name, and your friends and family are still on the rolls.
Stay strong with your party Trump! Keep taking their money and spending it on legal fees. Keeps it out of the hands of more credible candidates. DT is likely to lose again and show along the way is not to be missed. Lots of people say Biden is too old, including you Steve, but you can’t argue with results. He’s doing GREAT not JUST good things, and he’s got an excellent team around him. Four more years!
Thanks Steve, you've given a clarion call to every American that loves their country to step up and be counted. To stop a terrible man who doesn't love this country but himself. We must, if we're true patriots, stand up at the ballot box and stop this maniacal person from gaining power. It not about me or you, it's about us as a nation. We will either go forth as a country where everyone is valued or fall under the revengeful anger of one man.
How is it legal for this freakazoid to continue to swindle people out of their money for an entity that is being represented as one thing, but clearly is lining said freakazoid’s pockets?
Isn’t it misrepresentation? Forget that his fans don’t care what he does with their money? How is it not DOJ’s responsibility to stop him from this bs ploy.
No way is this dumb ass paying an hourly rate to his team of lawyer’s. He’s paying (that’s a joke in itself) a retainer that’s no where near the money he’s raising and pocketing the millions left on the table.
Why is this Trump minority allowed to grab all the attention and oxygen in every room?
Wake up Dems and Independents, we deserve more! Trump is never going to change since he knows only how to fight in the gutters. A bully and con man! Never high class but nasty dirty people who he asks to fight for him!
Put the whole truth out there about what is being accomplished in our country! This is not Trump’s party to push around and to lie about, over and over. Stand up and be heard! Get registered to vote BLUE! Forget the twisted polls! VOTE Democrats!
They are loyal to Trump because they are all suffering from their own potent discontent and have disconnected from reality. Nobody will change their minds. As people who are in tune with reality, we are left having to fight for the freedoms we want to have. The price for our freedoms is being vigilant and working for a 55% vote. We must vote out all far-right Republicans and vote in people who share our values. 2024 is important.
Thanks Steve. What world is dt living in that he believes it is ok to spew venom, vengeance and hatred? All in the name of making him head destroyer of our America! Just go away DT. You are not wanted or loved by people.
How Donald Trump still holds control over the Republican Party
What is new about Donald Trump in the polls? Nothing has changed. for months but we are still hearing the same thing over and over again.
My response: So?
So the MAGA wing of the Republican party still supports Trump. That is not news yet it repeated over and over and the danger is that the it morphs into the county still supporting Trump which I do not believe is the case.
Christie makes an argument that should speak to the general electorate: Why does the Republican party want a nominee for President who has multiple federal indictments, massive legal problems (whether or not one believes they are legitimate they exist), and can't even find enough lawyers to represent him.
How much beyond $40 million are MAGA folks willing to fork out for the legal bills of a billionaire whose emotional and mental problems have put him in a hole he dug himself.
Is there not a case to be made that a 79-year old guy with 4 or 5 indictments has so many of his own problems he could not even begin to consider addressing those of the country?
Would anyone with a business hire a CEO who has 4 federal indictments to run their company?
The answer to these questions are DUHHHHH. And these should be the talking points -- not the high poll numbers and crazy responses.
Once again, the messaging is not on target. Let's get this straight and repeat it endlessly so that people know that Trump just has too many problems. Or as my Grandmother used to say about prospective husbands: "Everyone has baggage but nobody needs a steamer trunk."
Trump is a steamer trunk.
As a retired AF veteran, I didn’t spend 20 years of my life defending democracy just to let a 💩bag like drumpf put a knife thru its heart.
You nailed it, Steve. If this country is important to me, to you, to all of us, we MUST vote! Loud and clear! A traitor like trump, which I believe he is, must NEVER WIELD POWER AGAIN!
Steve, another excellent, insightful presentation, as usual.
How is it, you ask, that DJ Trump still commands such a hold over his followers? I've spoken before on these threads about the phenomena of cognitive dissonance and Freudian defense mechanisms on the part of his followers. Let's look more at Trump himself....
We could analyze how he has been "riveting" and hypnotizing multitudes of passive viewers since his TV days on The Apprentice as an alpha male "top dog" boss-figure. (It's well known to hypnotherapists and psychotherapists that TV and movies induce a very suggestible hypnotic state in viewers. E.g., read the many papers archived at the APA over the decades on how cartoon violence affects children, etc.)
Trump did not earn that "leadership" position. It was all an artificial set-up created by the producers of the series and his own pretensions at "greatness" and "success." All of that has been de-constructed by investigative journalists starting with Tim O'Brien. But Trump exploited that artificial position to maximum advantage, and multitudes fell for it-- thinking him to be a "great business leader" and "financial mega-success." With his derisively-delivered line "YOU'RE FIRED!"-- he aggrandized himself into a dominance position with tremendous social power over other human beings' career success or failure.
In other words, that TV series allowed him to appear to the masses as a kind of influential demi-god. It was easy for him to parlay that into being a right-wing "populist" demagogue.
For his 2015-16 campaign and at all his rallies since then, Trump utilizes a few basic hypnotic techniques, most prominently these three:
1) Confusion-- he disorients less intelligent people's minds with his lengthy b.s. stories, whopping lies that paralyze logical analysis, ridiculous rhetorical questions, absurdist segues and run-on sentences, and so forth.
2) Very aggressive mouth behavior-- the frequent baring of teeth and severe pursing-curling of his lips-- which subliminally communicates dominance, as when two dogs first meet each other in a park or on the beach they quickly establish who is dominant by teeth-baring and growling.
3) Those weird hand gestures and arm movements, such as what has been described as "playing the accordion" routine, which subtly distract the attention so that he can pour into people's heads all his endless b.s..
And of course, as is well known, Trump has gained a massive following of "deplorables" (as Hillary Clinton termed them) by role-modeling and giving explicit verbal permission to be lying, cheating, nasty, intimidating, violent A**HOLES-- happy to break the law and violate common decency whenever it suits him/them.
And, lastly, so much of the content of his verbiage is the politics of resentment, rage, revenge, and scape-goating / demonizing "enemies," which stimulates in his followers the widespread "drug-fix" of being hopped up on adrenaline. They literally are “getting high on hatred.” And "high" on the hubris of feeling superior to their Democrat "enemies."
My understanding is that cult members will hold on like a pit bull! Hope they soon discover how he’s spending their contributions to cover his legal fees! He’s a criminal and more dangerous than Al Capone!
This Trump thing: it is a disease for which there is no vaccine to eradicate it. I have good friends who support Trump, people I believe to be good rational citizens, except for this disease they have that compels them to support a purposeless candidate for president of the United States. A candidate who fantasizes himself a living martyr...a martyr who is unwilling to die for anything, even himself. Is this a hero, a martyr? Trump is sick and he spreads his disease to the vulnerable, no matter what position they assume on life’s ladder. Rich, poor, white collar, blue collar, this disease doesn’t differentiate...it attacks the soul...it turns the sober to nonsensical, the good to bad, and the bad to flat fkn ugly.
Remember the look on Mitch McConnell’s face when the bottom dropped out of his brain and he was making everyone who witnessed this moment want to puke? His is the face of this sickness--and who’s hero is he now, as they cart him off on a stretcher?
I’ve been praying a lot, praying to any and all good gods and spirits who will listen....for the good of the people, for the good of the country, and for all the sacrifices that have been made in her defense---deliver us from this bullshit.
A frighteningly vast number of American people are willing to suffer (in both senses of the word) the selfish pathology of a Trump, who is mentally and emotionally unstable. Why? For one thing, we stopped teaching history and civics to elementary school students about fifty years ago, so those adults are now unable to see how their freedoms are being pulled out from under them. They’re also so damned busy trying to keep a roof over their family’s heads that they struggle to keep up even their personal relationships. No excuses, just an observation. Oh well, it was good while it lasted. Maybe we have to lose everything before we appreciate what we had. Okay, like most of us I am personally optimistic for some reason. We need to revive common sense and take back our helm. We’re allowing ourselves to be controlled.
Thank you for adding a transcript, it makes it much easier to focus on your podcasts and I don't worry about missing a word or a phrase.
Thank you for including a transcript. Much easier to read and refer back
You mentioned the 10% making primary decisions (30m vs 330m population). I’m trying to think if there is a better option for how to select candidates. The 19thC smoke/filled room is out, and not sure if the regional process might resolve the small % turnout challenge.
Unless there is a Deus ex Machina event between now and Nov 2024, the R candidate will be DJT. No matter how horrible he is, there small % who will support him will push him onto the ballot.
Interesting in todays stats was the 25% of R not supporting DJT. While it will not impact the primaries, it can help sway the General Election.
I encourage everyone to be active as we go into primary season and into the General Election. Many states are “purging “ voter rolls. Please make sure your name, and your friends and family are still on the rolls.
Stay strong with your party Trump! Keep taking their money and spending it on legal fees. Keeps it out of the hands of more credible candidates. DT is likely to lose again and show along the way is not to be missed. Lots of people say Biden is too old, including you Steve, but you can’t argue with results. He’s doing GREAT not JUST good things, and he’s got an excellent team around him. Four more years!
Thanks Steve, you've given a clarion call to every American that loves their country to step up and be counted. To stop a terrible man who doesn't love this country but himself. We must, if we're true patriots, stand up at the ballot box and stop this maniacal person from gaining power. It not about me or you, it's about us as a nation. We will either go forth as a country where everyone is valued or fall under the revengeful anger of one man.
How is it legal for this freakazoid to continue to swindle people out of their money for an entity that is being represented as one thing, but clearly is lining said freakazoid’s pockets?
Isn’t it misrepresentation? Forget that his fans don’t care what he does with their money? How is it not DOJ’s responsibility to stop him from this bs ploy.
No way is this dumb ass paying an hourly rate to his team of lawyer’s. He’s paying (that’s a joke in itself) a retainer that’s no where near the money he’s raising and pocketing the millions left on the table.
Hope the DOJ can claw ALL OF IT from freakazoid.
Stop this criminal from stealing. Just stop him!
Vote. Vote. Vote.
Why is this Trump minority allowed to grab all the attention and oxygen in every room?
Wake up Dems and Independents, we deserve more! Trump is never going to change since he knows only how to fight in the gutters. A bully and con man! Never high class but nasty dirty people who he asks to fight for him!
Put the whole truth out there about what is being accomplished in our country! This is not Trump’s party to push around and to lie about, over and over. Stand up and be heard! Get registered to vote BLUE! Forget the twisted polls! VOTE Democrats!
They are loyal to Trump because they are all suffering from their own potent discontent and have disconnected from reality. Nobody will change their minds. As people who are in tune with reality, we are left having to fight for the freedoms we want to have. The price for our freedoms is being vigilant and working for a 55% vote. We must vote out all far-right Republicans and vote in people who share our values. 2024 is important.
Thanks Steve. What world is dt living in that he believes it is ok to spew venom, vengeance and hatred? All in the name of making him head destroyer of our America! Just go away DT. You are not wanted or loved by people.